Not for those new to the series, but Harrison devotees should find ample emotional revelations and plot resolution, with...
Harrison (For A Few Demons More, 2007, etc.) wraps up a story arc but promises more to come in this sixth volume of a series set in a future Cincinnati.
Most humans have been exterminated by a rogue virus, allowing witches, vampires, elves and other nonhuman creatures to come out of hiding and live among the survivors. Among the witches is bounty hunter Rachel Morgan, and she’s in trouble again. The demon Al, supposedly imprisoned in the ever-after, is being summoned from his confinement each sundown, allowing him to seek revenge on the person who got him locked up—i.e., Rachel. While evading Al and searching for his summoner, she refuses a hazardous assignment from corrupt elven politician Trent, who’s tried to kill her in the past. As these plot lines converge, Rachel is forced to not only accept, but to exploit some unpleasant, newly learned truths about herself. Meanwhile, she continues to mourn the death of her boyfriend Kisten and struggles to remember the terrible circumstances of his murder. She must also resolve her tension-filled relationship with vampire roommate Ivy, decide what to do about Marshal (a potential new boyfriend) and address concerns about her emotionally unstable mother. It all might sound like a soap opera, but Harrison makes Rachel’s conflicts real and poignant without turning them into melodramatic slush. So it doesn’t matter too much that her current adventure is highly dependent on back story and can’t really stand on its own.
Not for those new to the series, but Harrison devotees should find ample emotional revelations and plot resolution, with enough loose ends to have them eagerly awaiting the next installment.Pub Date: March 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-078870-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Eos/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2007
A promising page-turner from a poised newcomer who’s well worth keeping tabs on.
This doorstopper epic fantasy and trilogy opener was originally self-published in 2014.
The details that give this ingeniously plotted yarn its backbone emerge gradually—and are not always entirely clear. Twenty years ago, a war swept away and annihilated the tyrannical Augurs when their formidable magic inexplicably faltered. Their servants, the Gifted, whose lesser magic derives from Essence (Islington has an irritating habit of capitalizing things), were forcibly constrained to obey the Four Tenets, meaning they can no longer use their magic to cause harm even in self-defense. At a school-cum-sanctuary-cum-prison for the Gifted, three 16-year-old friends, Davian, Wirr, and Asha, face their final tests. Though an excellent student, Davian cannot use Essence and faces a cruel exile. He decides to abscond. Wirr believes Davian’s an Augur whose higher-order magic blocks his ability to channel Essence, and he insists on joining him. Ilseth Tenvar, a seemingly sympathetic Elder, gives Davian a mysterious magic box to guide his progress. The next morning Asha wakes to a nightmare of her own. On the road Davian encounters the strange, scarred Gifted Taeris Sarr, who three years ago saved his life (Davian doesn’t remember the incident) and supposedly was executed for his pains. In the far north an ancient evil stirs, while in a related development, Caeden wakes in a forest to find himself covered in blood and with no memory of anything. So, in time-honored fashion, nobody is what they seem to be, everybody has a secret agenda, and the key players all lack pivotal memories. And while there’s nothing much new here, Islington’s natural storytelling ability provides incessant plot twists and maintains a relentless pace. The characters have well-rounded personalities and don’t make decisions or errors merely to advance the plot, even if they all sound and act the same youngish age.
A promising page-turner from a poised newcomer who’s well worth keeping tabs on.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-27409-8
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.
Self-assured, entertaining debut novel that blends genres and crosses continents in quest of magic.
The world’s not big enough for two wizards, as Tolkien taught us—even if that world is the shiny, modern one of the late 19th century, with its streetcars and electric lights and newfangled horseless carriages. Yet, as first-time novelist Morgenstern imagines it, two wizards there are, if likely possessed of more legerdemain than true conjuring powers, and these two are jealous of their turf. It stands to reason, the laws of the universe working thus, that their children would meet and, rather than continue the feud into a new generation, would instead fall in love. Call it Romeo and Juliet for the Gilded Age, save that Morgenstern has her eye on a different Shakespearean text, The Tempest; says a fellow called Prospero to young magician Celia of the name her mother gave her, “She should have named you Miranda...I suppose she was not clever enough to think of it.” Celia is clever, however, a born magician, and eventually a big hit at the Circus of Dreams, which operates, naturally, only at night and has a slightly sinister air about it. But what would you expect of a yarn one of whose chief setting-things-into-action characters is known as “the man in the grey suit”? Morgenstern treads into Harry Potter territory, but though the chief audience for both Rowling and this tale will probably comprise of teenage girls, there are only superficial genre similarities. True, Celia’s magical powers grow, and the ordinary presto-change-o stuff gains potency—and, happily, surrealistic value. Finally, though, all the magic has deadly consequence, and it is then that the tale begins to take on the contours of a dark thriller, all told in a confident voice that is often quite poetic, as when the man in the grey suit tells us, “There’s magic in that. It’s in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict.”
Generous in its vision and fun to read. Likely to be a big book—and, soon, a big movie, with all the franchise trimmings.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-385-53463-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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